Wrestling could be cut from Olympics

FILE - In this Sept. 27, 2000, file photo, USA's Rulon Gardner waves the American flag following his gold medal win against three-time Olympic gold medalist Alexandre Kareline, of Russia, in the Greco-Roman 130 kg final wrestling match at the Summer Games in Sydney. Gardner's epic upset of Russian wrestling great Alexander Karelin in 2000 remains one of the most compelling moments of the modern Olympics. Starting in 2020, youngsters looking to Gardner and Karelin for inspiration won't have a chance to excel on the sport's biggest stage. Gardner and nearly everyone else associated with the sport in the U.S. were jolted Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013 when International Olympic Committee leaders dropped wrestling from the Summer Games. (AP Photo/Katsumi Kasahara, File)
— AP

FILE - In this Sept. 27, 2000, file photo, USA's Rulon Gardner waves the American flag following his gold medal win against three-time Olympic gold medalist Alexandre Kareline, of Russia, in the Greco-Roman 130 kg final wrestling match at the Summer Games in Sydney. Gardner's epic upset of Russian wrestling great Alexander Karelin in 2000 remains one of the most compelling moments of the modern Olympics. Starting in 2020, youngsters looking to Gardner and Karelin for inspiration won't have a chance to excel on the sport's biggest stage. Gardner and nearly everyone else associated with the sport in the U.S. were jolted Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013 when International Olympic Committee leaders dropped wrestling from the Summer Games. (AP Photo/Katsumi Kasahara, File)
/ AP

Stephen Neal was preparing for his sophomore at San Diego High when he spent the summer of 1992 working as a lifeguard at Bud Kearns Pool at Morley Field.

There was a small television – “one of those six-inch TVs with an antenna,” he said – in the locker room, and they had it tuned to the 1992 Summer Olympics from Barcelona. He remembers Zeke Jones and the seven other U.S. wrestlers, hulking humans in one of the Games’ oldest and purest sports, winning medals and representing the country. It ignited a dream.

Said Neal: “I thought, ‘Someday, I’d like to get that American flag behind me on the top step of the podium.’”

That dream suddenly is a faint flicker for wrestlers globally, following the astonishing decision Tuesday by the International Olympic Committee’s 15-member executive board to eliminate all wrestling – men’s and women’s, freestyle and Greco-Roman – from the Summer Games program beginning in 2020.

Technically, there is a chance that wrestling could be voted back when the IOC executive board decides whether to add up to three sports at the September congress to choose a 2020 host.

Realistically? Slim, at best. Wrestling must vie with seven other sports – baseball/softball, squash, karate, sport climbing, roller sports, wakeboarding and wushu – for inclusion, and the IOC has for years vowed to trim an overflowing Summer Games program.

“This is a process of renewing and renovating the program for the Olympics,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said. “It’s not a case of what’s wrong with wrestling. It is what’s right with the 25 core sports.”

It may go deeper than that, though. The IOC, at its heart, is a highly political animal, and eliminating what is perceived as an another “American” sport – the United States has won 124 medals in wrestling, more than any other nation – may be further evidence of the Europe-ification of the Olympic movement, in much the same way that the removal of baseball and softball after 2008 was. Eight of the 15 members on the executive board are from Western Europe, and they vote by secret ballot.

Modern pentathlon? It had athletes from just 26 countries at the 2012 Games (wrestling had 71) and continues to survive. It also has a staunch advocate on the executive board in Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., the son of the former IOC president and a vice president of the International Modern Pentathlon Union.

Taekwondo? It is dominated by South Korea (29 countries won medals in wrestling in 2010) and continues to survive. Samsung, a South Korean company, also happens to be a major Olympic sponsor.

Wrestling, meanwhile, dates to the ancient Olympics in Greece in 708 B.C. It also was part of the original sports program when the modern Olympics were launched in 1896, and every Summer Games since. Unless the IOC unexpectedly reverses course at in September, the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro will be wrestling’s farewell.

“It’s pretty sad,” said Neal, who won two NCAA titles at Cal State Bakersfield and came one match from making the 2000 Olympic team. “You’re going to take away from the history of the Olympics. It’s the original Olympic sport. It’s who’s better, you or me, and you decide it right there on the mat.